About

$28,720

pledged of $25,000 goal

800

backers

EL CAPITAN
is a visually stunning and psychologically revealing film of four climbers’
three day climb on the face of Yosemite Valley’s famed El Capitan. Ken
De Roux, Film Curator, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

GRAND
PRIZE

Festival
International du Film D’Adventure Vecue

La
Plagne, France

GRAND
PRIZE

Film festival
International Montagna Esplorazione

Trento,
Italy

GOLD
MEDAL

Fest
international du Film Alpine

Les
Diablerets, Switzerland

BEST
OF FESTIVAL

International
Bergfilme Munchen

Munich,
Germany

GRAND
PRIZE

Banff
Festival of Mountain Films

Banff,
Canada

GRAND
PRIZE

Mountainfilm

Telluride,
Colorado, U.S.A.

"Among
climbing films, EL CAPITAN is without peer in poetic beauty."

- Royal
Robbins

"The
line between gulps of void and solid rock straight up and down – hair-raising,
funny, pure, beautiful."

- Gary
Snyder

"Brilliant!
Captures the essence of the “Big
Wall” . . . EL CAPITAN is the
best climbing film I’ve ever seen!"

- Yvon
Chouinard

"EL
CAPITAN is one of the very best
climbing films around. It deserves
to circulate." ' '

- Doug
Robinson, Outside Magazine

"EL
CAPITAN is the best rock climbing film. . . period! No other film compares!"

- David
Brower

"EL
CAPITAN beautifully captures the essence of our struggle with
the first ascent on the Nose. This
film is fantastic!"

- Warren
Harding

A brief
history of the film EL CAPITAN

Glen Denny and I planned The El Capitan Film during the first part of 1968. It had long been Glen’s ambition to make a film about a climb up the legendary El Capitan in Yosemite Valley ever since he had climbed it. He wanted to use Gary Colliver, Richard McCracken and Lito Tejada-Flores in the film, who had also climbed El Capitan, so he contacted them and arranged to start filming in May of 1968, before the weather got too hot.

I
was determined to capture live sound believing this would provide a depth
beyond what a written voice-over narrative could do. Wireless microphones were very primitive at that time and
limited to transmitting less than a 100 feet. We needed them to transmit over half of a mile, so I delayed
the start of filming for almost a month while I had them modified to function
beyond what they were designed to do.

The
challenge of filming the climb created many unexpected complications and delays
including Gary Colliver's fall that broke a couple of his ribs and the pull out of one
of the investors. With Glen’s
unrelenting determination and the loyalty of the three climbers, we
prevailed.

After
we were done filming, Glen and I spent a few months organizing the footage and
the sound. Then, Glen resigned from
the project and handed everything over to me. With several hours of raw footage and only a vague notion of
what he might have had in mind, Lito Tejada-Flories helped me edit a rough-cut
about three hours long into an accurate chronological progression of the
climb. At this point it might have
held together with a voice-over narration as in a conventional
documentary. I knew there was more
potential than this with Glen’s footage, so the challenge was on. Richard McCracken helped reduce over
100 hours of wild sound down to about an hour revealing some wonderful moments
of verbal expressions, exclamations, and personal feelings.

Now
that there was a manageable amount of material, I was more encouraged but still
had no solution. The footage sat
in cans for almost eight years during which time, with the help of an American
Film Institute grant, I paid off all the production debts and pondered on how I
could make something out of the footage.
By 1977, I was finally able to cut the film down to about an hour in
just a couple of weeks. I knew
that if the sound could be made to work, the film would be special. Finally, in 1978, ten years after
filming, El Capitan was completed and premiered at the San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art. Glen came to see
it; his presence was incredibly
important because his approval would finally resolve the whole experience for
me. El Capitan was well received,
won several festival awards and for the next 25 years remained very popular.

By 1995 El Capitan was only available on
VHS tapes. The 16mm prints
were fading and damaged from wear and tear and since the internegative had been
damaged, new prints could no longer be made. As digital technology improved and DVDs of much better
quality began to replace VHS tapes, I made the decision to discontinue VHS and
took the film out of circulation.

Even
though El Capitan was no longer being distributed, I continued to get inquires
and requests for the film. When
very, poor, quality bootlegged copies started showing up on the Internet, I knew
I had to do something. I decided
to look at the original film, that ran through the camera, and to my surprise
after almost 45 years, it still looked pretty good. I had it digitized (scanned) in high definition. The new technology is of such high
resolution that every little scratch and bit of dirt on the film showed up
crystal clear. In order to restore the film to its original condition, over 86,000 frames, one frame at a time, has to be digitally cleaned and repaired.
With digital software we are able to reconstruct the film with all the
original effects, restore the color, and make it look even better than the 16mm film
prints.

After
several years of being repeatedly asked, “Whatever happened to the climbers?”
I approached them with the idea of
making a film that would reveal their lives today, and have them recall their
memories of filming El Capitan.
About a year ago, I started filming and have captured some delightful
and insightful moments of their lives and accomplishments. Though still being edited, the film is
turning out to be candid and entertaining. When it is finished, it will be
included on the DVD with the restored El Capitan.

With the money that I hope to raise from
Kickstarter contributors, I will be able to complete the El Capitan film
restoration, finish “Whatever happened to the climbers?” (working title) and
prepare the DVD master.

After
being out of distribution for over 10 years, with your help, the classic film, El Capitan, will
finally be available again, restored in HD and looking better than ever.

If you would be inclined to pass this
information on to your friends by way of Twitter and Facebook, it would really
help.

Thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Fred Padula

What
happens if we don’t reach our goal?

If we don't
reach our goal, we get nothing. Donors pledge the amounts, but don't actually
pay until the goal is reached and the funding deadline has passed. When we meet
our goal we can complete these two films and fulfill our commitments.

Pledge awards: Please add $25.00 for shipping out of the U. S.

Risks and challenges

There are not a lot of risks to this project. The main challenges are to finish up the restoration and find a good DVD design and duplicating service provider.